How the numbers are produced
Every figure on this site is computed from a published dataset of holiday rules, with the same code for every country. This page explains the rules so that you can trust the numbers, or challenge them.
Sources
Holiday dates come from the open source holidays library, a rules based dataset maintained by hundreds of contributors and used in payroll, logistics and scheduling software worldwide. It encodes each country's legislation as rules (fixed dates, Easter based dates, substitute day policies, lunar calendars), which is why future years can be generated before governments publish their official lists. The dataset behind this site is version holidays 0.103; every page and file is regenerated when the library is updated.
Display names come from ISO 3166, with a few common English names substituted (South Korea rather than Korea, Republic of). Holiday names are the library's English translations.
Scope: national holidays
The country pages list the holidays that apply nationwide. Where regional holidays dominate (Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, the United States, India, Brazil among others) a note on the page says so. One exception: the United Kingdom page shows the England and Wales bank holidays, because that is what nearly everyone searching for UK bank holidays wants, with the Scottish and Northern Irish differences explained in the note. Regional pages are the next thing on the roadmap.
What is a working day
A working day is any calendar day that is neither a weekend day nor a public holiday. Two consequences follow. A holiday that falls on the weekend does not reduce the working days count, except when the country grants a substitute day, which then appears in the list marked as observed. And half days, school holidays, company closures and religious observances that are not legal holidays are not counted.
Weekends
The weekend is Saturday and Sunday by default. Friday and Saturday applies to Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Maldives, Mauritania, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen. Iran rests on Friday only, and Brunei on Friday and Sunday. Where the legal rest day is a single day but a five day office week is the norm (for instance Hong Kong or Paraguay), Saturday and Sunday are used. The calculator lets you set any combination.
A few countries (China, Hungary, Latvia among others) move weekend days to build longer breaks around a holiday: a Saturday or Sunday then becomes an official working day. Those dates are listed on the country page, counted as working days, and published in the API as working_weekend_days.
Observed and estimated dates
Observed marks a substitute day off: when Christmas falls on a Saturday, several countries move the day off to the following Monday. Both the original date and the substitute are listed, and only the substitute reduces the working days count. Estimated marks holidays set by the Islamic, Hebrew, Chinese or other lunar calendars for years where the authorities have not yet fixed the date. These estimates are usually right to the day and occasionally off by one; they are replaced by the official dates as they are announced.
Long weekends and bridge days
A long weekend is a run of three or more consecutive days off that includes at least one public holiday, counted around the year boundary too. A bridge day is a single working day squeezed between days off; taking it as leave produces a break of at least four days. Both are computed mechanically from the same calendar, so they reflect the national holidays only.
Manual corrections
A short list of corrections is applied on top of the library and published with the source: Belgium is limited to its ten legal holidays (the library also lists Easter Sunday and Pentecost Sunday), Sweden's Sundays are left out because they are already weekend days, and the weekend is set to Saturday and Sunday for the few countries whose legal rest day is Sunday alone. Nothing else is edited by hand.
Accuracy and corrections
Governments change holidays, add one off days for elections or mourning, and confirm lunar dates late. The dataset is refreshed with each library release, typically several times a year, and the version number in the footer tells you which one you are looking at. If you spot an error, write to hello@openworkdays.com with the country, the date and a link to the official source; corrections that affect the underlying rules are also contributed back to the library so that everybody benefits.
Licence
The generated dataset is published under CC BY 4.0. The underlying library is MIT licensed. Attribution to OpenWorkdays with a link is all that is asked.